Saturday, September 3, 2016

EPA’s Dangerous Regulatory Pollution

If you’re wondering whether to trust the Environmental Protection
Agency on mercury, ozone, climate change or other regulatory actions,
you need look no further than how it has handled particulates.

EPA whitewashed the toxic flash flood
it caused in Colorado. But it says particulate matter smaller than 10
microns (PM10) is risky and worries incessantly about 2.5-micron
particles. (A human hair is 50-70 microns; dust, pollen and mold are
around 10; combustion exhaust particles are 2.5 microns or smaller.)

The
tinier specks, EPA asserts, “can get deep into your lungs, and some may
even get into your bloodstream.” Eliminating all such particles in our
air is absolutely essential to human health, longevity and well-being,
the agency insists. There is no threshold below which there is no risk,
its advisors say.

Broad
population-based epidemiological evidence “links” short term PM2.5
exposures (hours or days) to cardiovascular and respiratory mortality,
an EPA report claims. Long-term exposure (years or decades) has been
“linked” to respiratory disease and cardiovascular and lung cancer
mortality.

Particulate matter doesn’t just make you sick; it is directly
related “to dying sooner than you should,” former EPA Administrator Lisa
Jackson testified to Congress. “If we could reduce particulate matter
to levels that are healthy,” it would be like “finding a cure for
cancer” – saving up to 570,000 lives a year.

Indeed, EPA says all
but a sliver of the hundreds of billions of dollars in health and
environmental benefits that it claims result from its mercury, climate
change and “clean power” regulations are actually due to the “ancillary”
benefits of reducing PM2.5 emissions from power plants, factories,
refineries, petrochemical plants, cars, light trucks, and diesel-powered
trucks, buses and heavy equipment.

But wait! Just when
you thought life couldn’t get more dangerous, and thank the lord for
EPA, the agency changed its rules and health advisories – though not its
regulations for permissible particulate levels.

Epidemiological
studies are corrupted by uncontrollable “confounding factors” and thus
cannot reliably identify causes and effects, or attribute all the
asserted deaths to particulates. How can you separate PM2.5 particles
emitted by vehicles, power plants and factories from particles due to
volcanoes, forest fires, construction projects, dust storms or pollen –
or from cigarettes that rapidly send 1000 times more tiny particles into
lungs than what EPA says is lethal if they come from other sources? It
can’t be done.

How can you tell whether a death was caused by airborne
particles – and not by viruses, bacteria, dietary habits, obesity,
smoking, diabetes, cold weather and countless other factors? It’s
impossible.

In fact, EPA has not even come up with a plausible
biological explanation for why or how super-tiny particles can cause a
plethora of diseases and deaths simply by getting into lungs or
bloodstreams. Its concept of “premature” deaths primarily reflects the
fact that more people die on some days than others.

Not
only do US laws, the Nuremberg Code, the Helsinki Accords and EPA Rule
1000.17 make it unethical or illegal to conduct toxicity experiments on
humans. When California, Washington, Rutgers and other University
researchers explained the experiments to their volunteers, they
generally failed to advise them that EPA says the pollution they were
going to breathe was toxic, carcinogenic and deadly.

Instead, volunteers were told they would face only “minimal
risks,” the kind they would ordinarily encounter in daily life, in
performing routine physical activities. Others were told they might
experience claustrophobia in the small study chambers, or some minor
degree of airway irritation, shortness of breath, coughing or wheezing.
There is no way such advisories can lead to “informed consent.”

Moreover,
the people who EPA claims are most at risk, most susceptible to getting
horribly sick and even dying, from exposure to these particulates were
precisely the same people recruited by EPA and its EPA-funded research
teams: the elderly, asthmatics, diabetics, people with heart disease,
children. And to top it off, the test subjects were exposed to eight,
thirty or even sixty times more particulates per volume – for up to two
hours – than they would breathe outdoors, and what EPA claims are
dangerous or lethal.

So which is it?

How can it
be that PM2.5 particulates are dangerous or lethal for Americans in
general, every time they step outside – but harmless to human guinea
pigs who were intentionally administered pollution dozens of times worse
than what they would encounter outdoors? How can it be, as EPA-funded
researchers now assert, that “acute, transient responses seen in
clinical studies cannot necessarily be used to predict health effects of
chronic or repeated exposure” – when that is precisely what EPA claims
they can and do show?

If PM2.5 is lethal and there is no safe threshold, shouldn’t
EPA officials, its researchers and their institutions be prosecuted for
deliberately misleading volunteers and conning them into breathing the
poisons? Shouldn’t they be prosecuted for experimenting on children, in
direct violation of EPA’s own rules banning such experiments – and for
deleting evidence describing those tests?

Thankfully, none of the test subjects died, or the charges would be much more serious.

But
if no one died, doesn’t that mean EPA is lying when it says there is no
safe level, that all PM2.5 particulates are toxic, that its regulations
are saving countless lives, and that the direct and ancillary benefits
vastly outweigh their multi-billion-dollar annual costs? And if that is
the case, shouldn’t EPA officials be prosecuted for lying to Congress
and public, and imposing all those costs for no real benefits?

Doesn’t
it also mean there really are safe levels and PM2.5 particles are not
really toxic or lethal? Doesn’t it mean EPA’s draconian standards should
be significantly modified, and companies and communities should be
compensated for their costs in complying with excessive, unjustified
particulate regulations?

Shouldn’t EPA officials be prosecuted
for imposing unnecessary regulations that cost billions of dollars, kill
thousands of jobs, shut down electricity generation, reduce living
standards, raise prices for food and construction projects, and actually
lower health, welfare and life spans for numerous people?

In
either event, shouldn’t the researchers and universities be compelled to
return the hundreds of millions of dollars they received for these
deceptive, unethical, illegal human experiments – and compensate the
test subjects for subjecting them to emotional distress when they
realize they received “lethal” doses? Shouldn’t EPA officials be fired
and prosecuted for their roles in all of this?

And now, during
the past few months, EPA has been trying to use the prestigious National
Academy of Sciences to cover-up and whitewash the agency’s illegal
experiments on humans. In secret, and with no public notice or
opportunity to comment, the agencies held meetings and issued a draft
report.

Milloy got wind of what was going on. He and four other
experts were given an unprecedented opportunity to testify before the
NAS on August 24. Their presentations and other information used in this
article can be found here, here and here. Will their efforts bring change? Time will tell.

Up
to now, EPA has said and done whatever it deems necessary or convenient
to advance its regulatory agenda. The health, environmental and
societal costs are unjustified and can no longer be tolerated. It’s time
to clean house – and start enforcing laws against human experiments and
fraudulent research.

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The Patriot Factor

I’m an American Patriot...part of the grassroots movement of bloggers spreading the truth about the corrupt and traitorous Obama regime and his sanctioned islamization of America. I'm also co-host with Craig Andresen of RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS on American Political Radio. http://tunein.com/radio/American-Political-Radio-s273246/